John Dendahl has penned the following letter to Senator Michael “Who?” Bennet. It addresses Bennet on the issue of Obamacare better than I could, and I have received Mr. Dendahl’s permission to copy the letter here:

The Hon. Michael Bennet
United States Senator
702 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC  20510

Dear Sen. Bennet:

Re: Cost of Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare)

“Are [Sen. Bennet’s] various claims of cost savings and deficit reduction still operative?” On August 26, I emailed your staffer, Mac McGraw, with that question. I sent follow-ups on September 3 and September 13, copying the latter to your chief of staff, Guy Cecil, and leaving him a phone message. On September 27, I left a second phone message asking Mr. Cecil to call and respond. The silence has been deafening!

My correspondence to you addressing ObamaCare began one year ago this month. It included several references to cost, perhaps most importantly links to, and quotations from, statements available on the Internet by Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf. Despite Elmendorf’s obvious skepticism, your replies to my letters — unresponsive, canned statements — continued to advance rosy claims such as that ObamaCare would “significantly reduce the deficit” and Medicare would be protected.

My wife and I came into this scene last year asking you and Sen. Udall to protect Medicare Advantage. Apparently, you didn’t lift a finger to accomplish that. Instead, you crafted a sly amendment to ObamaCare, unanimously-approved, purportedly protecting Medicare but leaving a Mack-Truck-sized loophole in the language so that Medicare Advantage could be deep-sixed.

Your Medicare claims are, and were always, so transparently false as to be laughable. The provider universe willing to accept Medicare patients shrinks further every day, and one shudders in thinking about availability and cost of Medicare Advantage. Though I await an answer from your office as to your repeated claims of deficit reduction, I understand that even the CBO no longer goes through the charade of giving cover to that.

The Bennet campaign advertising claims of your successful performance in business could be taken right out of one of Dan Maes’ campaign speeches. Whether your experience was any more successful than his is immaterial at this point, because your performance in Washington is so demonstrably inconsistent with the leadership, decision-making and judgment that are hallmarks of private sector success. You have done two things well: follow others’ orders to a T, and whine like a whipped dog. You have served neither Colorado nor the Republic with either honesty or courage.

Perhaps someone in your office can provide a response to this: Are Sen. Bennet’s various claims of cost savings and deficit reduction still operative?

Sincerely,

John Dendahl